Based on the graphic novel Polar: Came from the Cold, “Polar” stars Mads Mikkelsen as Duncan Vizla, who is just about to retire from his career as the world’s most skilled and deadly international assassin. This is not necessarily his choice but the shadowy organization that he works for makes it a policy of not employing anyone beyond their 50th birthday—the tradeoff is that they are given an extremely generous pension package that pays off nearly in full to them upon retirement. Unfortunately for the company, too many people are coming up to their retirement ages and instead of paying them all off and jeopardizing an important business deal, the head of the organization, Mr. Blut (Matt Lucas), elects to instead send his own personal quartet of killers out to kill those employees so that their funds revert to the company. To this end, Blut’s right-hand woman, Vivian (Katheryn Winnick), sends Vizla off to Belarus for a final job that is actually a frame-up. Being the greatest, he sees through the plot immediately, kills all of his attackers and demands that Vizla and Vivian pay up his contracted $2 million fee before slipping away to his remote cabin in a small Montana town.
Of course, where would a film about a retiring assassin be without the presence of a woman who helps him develop a newfound respect for life, to misquote a film far better than this one. This would be Camille (Vanessa Hudgens), the shy woman who lives in the cabin next door. Although initially aloof, Vizla’s cold exterior begins to melt a bit and he is soon chopping wood for her on the sly and agreeing to talk to the young kids at school about his experiences traveling around the world. (“How many of you have seen a dead body that’s been in the sun for three weeks?”) Eventually she trusts him enough to open up about the time that she was beaten and raped by an attacker dressed as Santa Claus. While all of this is going on, Blut’s hit squad is traveling to all the places where Vizla owns properties and slaughtering anyone who happens to be there —unfortunately, Montana is last on the list so we have to see them kill a lot of people along the way.
How all of this plays out from a narrative perspective will not come as a surprise for too many viewers. Hell, the basic tropes are so familiar that this is actually the second film I have seen in the last two months about a retiring hit man going up against the former employers that have betrayed him that features a late-inning cameo from Richard Dreyfuss as one of said betrayers. No, what separates this one from most of its generic brethren is the sheer scuzziness of the approach employed by Jonas Akerlund. Practically every scene, with the exception of some of the moments between Vizla and Camille, ends with someone getting messily shot in the head, an act that appears with such depressing regularity that some viewers may finally give up and shout “I’ll have what s/he/it is having!”
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